


Locked Out, after dinner with the Bittles

by JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle



Series: Locked Out [7]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Coming Out, M/M, discussion of coming out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-01 16:05:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17247242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle/pseuds/JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle
Summary: Suzanne, Coach and Moomaw talk after Eric and Jack leave





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Follows the dinner in [Chapter 7](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15807630/chapters/38541044#workskin) of Locked Out. The opinions expressed by the characters do not necessarily agree with the author's.

Suzanne made an effort to sit up straight in her chair. To think that Dicky had walked out of dinner, and with … a boyfriend? In front of his grandmother, no less?

Suzanne loved her mother, truly she did, but just at this moment, she wished her mother hadn’t come for dinner. If she and Rick had just a little time to talk about this on their own, to figure out how to handle things, then maybe they could move forward.

“I’m sorry, Mother, Suzanne said. “That you had to see that.”

“That I had to see what, precisely?” her mother said. 

“Dicky, storming out like that,” Suzanne said. “And bringing up that he’s … that he … has a boyfriend — while we have company over, too,” Suzanne said. “We raised him to be polite to guests.”

“Are you counting me as a guest?” Moomaw said. “Because I don’t think him being gay was any news to Jack, or that Jack was offended by anything he said or did.”

“Exactly what are you implying, Mother?” Suzanne asked.

“She’s not implying anything, Suzy,” Rick said. “We just have bigger things to be thinking about than whether Junior slammed the door on his way out. He told us he’s gay, and we’ve got to figure out — I guess we have to figure out what that means.”

“I’m pretty sure that means he likes men,” Moomaw said.

“Mother, stop,” Suzanne said. “That’s not what Rick meant. He meant, what does this mean for Dicky going forward? What does this mean for our relationship? I thought I knew him.”

“We do know him,” Rick said.

“But we didn’t know this,” Suzanne said, standing up to clear the half-eaten plates of food. “He never said anything about this.”

Rick stood to help her, and said, “Maybe he didn’t, but plenty of other people did. You know why he wouldn’t say anything -- you know how mean they were.”

“But why didn’t he say anything to us?” Suzanne said, and took the plates into the kitchen without waiting for an answer.

Her mother followed her, carrying the platter of chicken and basket of biscuits.

“Thanks, Mother,” Suzanne said. “You shouldn’t have to --”

“The day I can’t help my daughter clear the table is the day I won’t,” Moomaw said. “Besides, if I know Dicky there’s pie in here somewhere.”

“There are two pies,” Suzanne said, “which I know you saw before dinner. But I don’t feel much like dessert. You want to bring one home with you?”

“I don’t mind if I do,” her mother said. “I’ll take the peach.”

“Big surprise there,” Suzanne said. “Dicky always did make a lovely peach pie. Even once he started putting the ginger in. It gives it a little extra flavor.”

“Kind of like Dicky,” her mother said. “Always sweet, but not always what you expect.”

Suzanne went to get the pie, and saw Dicky’s favorite earbuds lying on the counter next to it. He hadn’t packed them before he left. When he put them down, he thought he’d be right back. Now, to her eyes, they looked abandoned and lost. The sight made the tears threaten to spill and her breath hitch.

“Mama, what am I going to do?” Suzanne said. “Dicky -- my little boy -- just up and walked out of my house, and I don’t know if he ever intends to come back.”

“Come here,” her mother said, and opened her arms.

And Suzanne, despite being nearly 50 years old, went into her mother’s embrace and took comfort from it. She knew it shouldn’t feel so safe; her mother was even shorter than her, and Suzanne could feel the narrowness of her mother’s shoulders as she wrapped her arms around her. But it was her mother, and being wrapped in her arms was a comfort.

It was what she used to be for Dicky, what she still wanted to be for him.

“Why didn’t he come to me?” she asked. “To us? Rick and I could have --”

Her mother moved to hold her a short arm’s length away, looking full in her face.

“Could have what?” she asked. “All he needed was for you to say you love and support him, and you could have done that tonight.”

“We did say that tonight,” Suzanne said, knowing she sounded like a defensive teenager and unable to help it.

“You didn’t really show it,” her mother said. “In fact, you talked about how you could have fixed this. Dicky doesn’t need any fixing, Suzanne.”

“But this is going to make his life so much harder,” Suzanne argued.

“It will,” Rick said, carrying in the rest of the dishes. “I meant what I said -- Junior’s my son, and there’s nothing that would make me stop loving him. But this is something I wouldn’t choose for any child I cared about, or shoot, any child at all. And before you say it, I know it’s not my choice, and I understand it’s probably not his either. Just maybe, if we knew, we could have made things easier for him.”

“Maybe he wouldn’t have wanted to go so far from home,” Suzanne said. “I feel like we’ve lost him.”

“He loves you,” her mother said. “He loves you both. Why else was he so scared to tell you? And it turned out was right, at least a little. I know you both heard people talk about him -- did you never give any thought to what to say if he did come out to you? There’s all kinds of resources out there.”

“Now, Moomaw,” Rick said. “I guess I thought if there was going to be this conversation, there’d be time to get ready for it. Or time to come back to it, maybe. I didn’t think it would be one and done.”

“I thought I knew him,” Suzanne said. “I thought we were best friends, and we could talk about things. Here he has a boyfriend who cares enough to come all the way here for a conversation I didn’t know we were going to have. What else don’t I know?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” her mother said. “There’s only one person who can tell you that.”

As soon as her mother left, Suzanne called Eric. When he didn’t answer, she left a message asking him to please call her back. She called again, and again, and still he didn’t answer.

Jack had said he had hotel room near the airport. Maybe they could go find him? Not to drag Dicky back -- just to talk. But there had to be dozens of hotels they could be in.

So she texted Dicky.

_Please let us know you’re safe._

He didn’t answer, so after a minute or two she tried again.

_I’m sorry that went so badly. Please call me._

When the phone didn’t ring, she thought maybe he’d want to sleep on it. She tried very hard not to think about him sleeping in a hotel room with another man.

_Come back for breakfast so we can talk._

Maybe she could make it seem more normal.

_You left your earbuds in the kitchen too._

Rick had loaded the dishwasher and washed the pots and pans while she had been staring at her phone.

Finally, he took the phone out of her hands and said, “Go watch TV or read a book or something, Suze. We’re gonna have to give him a little time here.”

She watched a Law and Order rerun on TV and then went in the kitchen to get her phone from where Rick had plugged it in.

There was a text.

_I can meet you for breakfast tomorrow at the Cracker Barrel in Conyers. 8:00?_

That was early enough they could probably make it to church, but she she didn’t really care.

_Thanks, Dicky,_ she texted back. _I’ll bring your earbuds._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coach's POV before and after breakfast with Eric

“The most important thing to remember, Suzy, is to stay calm,” Coach said, navigating his truck towards Conyers on I-20. “Your mother was right about one thing last night — we need to make sure he knows we love him and we’re not abandoning him.”

Suzanne didn’t look away from the road ahead of them, but she nodded her agreement.

Then she said, “Oh! I remembered his earbuds!”

Coach nodded, even though he was pretty sure Junior could replace those. If he hadn’t already.

“Do you suppose he’ll have that Jack with him?” Suzanne asked.

Coach had thought about that once Suzanne relayed news of the meeting.

“I expect so,” he said. “Junior doesn’t have a car there, and he’s too young to drive someone else’s rental.”

He paused.

“And you probably shouldn’t think of him as ‘that Jack,’” he said. “He’s Jack, our son’s boyfriend, and if Junior gets the idea we don’t like him, that’ll just make everything worse.”

“I know that, Rick,” Suzanne said. “And I do like him. He seemed perfectly nice before … everything last night. I just don’t want him to take my little boy away.”

“Seems to me Junior left under his own power,” Coach said. “And a while ago, at that.”

“But he always came back before,” Suzanne said. “Before this summer, at least.”

“Kids grow up,” Coach said. “Trying to stop it happening isn’t good for anyone.”

“I know that, Rick,” Suzanne said. “And I know Dicky is a grown man who can make his own choices, whether I like them or not. I just want him to know he can always come home — that we’re here for him.”

“That all?” Coach said. 

“I won’t say I’m not disappointed,” Suzanne said. “I guess he won’t be coming home after college and marrying a nice girl and giving us grandbabies like I always hoped. And I do feel like I had the rug pulled out from under my feet last night. But that’s not the important thing this morning. Not when he’s getting on a plane to fly away today.”

“Then that’s the game plan,” Coach said.

************************

After breakfast, Coach allowed that it had gone about as well as it could, and Suzanne mostly stuck to the plan.

There was the awkward moment when Junior asked Suzanne if she would fix him if she could — “fix him” was a bad phrase, Coach thought, made it sound like she’d take him to the vet and have him neutered — and she really hadn’t had an answer except that she knew she couldn’t anyway.

Because what parent wouldn’t make their child’s life easier if they could?

Coach was honestly proud of Junior for coming back, talking to them, keeping calm for the most part. But he could tell that they weren’t giving Junior what he wanted.

What he wanted, Coach supposed, was for his parents to be happy for him. Happy the way they would have been if he brought a nice girl home. Or happy the way they would have been had Junior been a daughter, and brought Jack home. He would have loved to have Jack as a son-in-law under those circumstances. But Junior wasn’t a girl, no matter what the boys in middle school said about his baking and his figure skating. And that made things difficult.

Coach had seen Junior’s eyes go wide when he talked about how the school board could let him go at any time, without even giving a reason. How this whole thing could cause problems not just for Junior, not just for Jack, but for the people associated with them, whether they wanted it to or not.

He’d told Junior not to worry about, because what was the point? It was pretty clear that most everybody up at Samwell knew Junior was gay, and he’d already been named captain. There was no putting the genie back in the bottle.

Not that anyone down here paid much attention to college hockey. Maybe no one would notice. Unless Samwell did well enough to make it the Frozen Four. Then it would be all over the place, and he was sure the local papers would be doing stories all about the hometown boy made good.

Except that’s not what those stories would be about. Or not all they would be about. They would talk about the southern boy who wouldn’t play football on his daddy’s team, who figure skated in sequins and spandex, who beat out grandmas to win ribbons at the county fair for his baking.

And if it came out that he was dating a professional hockey player, that would all happen on a national level.

There was no way any parent would want their child to be subjected to that. There was no way anyone would want to be part of it.

That was leaving aside the morality of it all. Coach had decided a while ago that it didn’t matter to him -- on a moral level -- who Junior loved, as long as he was honorable in his dealings. But he knew that there were plenty of people who would disagree. Maybe even Suzanne. He hadn’t ever talked about it with her.

“What do you think?” he said, driving back towards Madison.

“About what?” Suzanne said. “Church? I think we should just go home today.”

“I meant about whether it’s wrong,” Coach said. “Being like that.”

“I used to,” Suzanne said. “For years. It just seemed … unnatural.”

“But now?”

“After those boys locked Dicky in the utility closet, I had a long, hard think about it,” Suzanne said. “About what it would mean if they were right about what they said. And the first thing I thought was that hurting a child like that was more wrong than anything Junior could have ever done. And then, you know, I started paying attention when it was in the news, or when celebrities came out -- I know you thought it was funny how much I watched Ellen -- and I decided that if I had to take sides, I knew which one I thought behaved better. And if people were falling in love, who was I to say they couldn’t?”

She took a breath.

“But I still hoped it wouldn’t apply to Dicky.”

“I know what you mean,” Coach said.

“But do I think this means he’s going to hell? Because he looks at Jack like that?” Suzanne shook her head. “I can’t believe God gets too upset about people loving each other.”

“So what do we do?” Coach said.

“What we said,” Suzanne said. “We keep loving him, and we support him, even if it’s uncomfortable.”

“So you want to go buy a rainbow flag for the front porch?” Coach said, hoping to get a smile.

He didn’t.

“It might come that,” Suzanne said firmly. “But not yet. Today we start by buying tickets to go to family weekend. Both of us.”


End file.
